Using Italian data that includes both inflation forecasts of firms and external information on their balance sheets, we study the causal effect of changes in the dispersion of beliefs about future inflation on the misallocation of resources. We find that as disagreement increases, so does...

This chapter reviews and synthesizes our current understanding of the shocks that drive economic fluctuations. The chapter begins with an illustration of the problem of identifying macroeconomic shocks, followed by an overview of the many recent innovations for identifying shocks. It then...

We provide an overview of the recent developments of the literature on the determinants of long-term capital flows, global imbalances, and valuation effects. We present the main stylized facts of the new international financial landscape in which external balance sheets of countries have grown...

We study the effects of an anticipated dollarization, announced today but planned to be implemented at some future date, in a simple open-economy model. Motivated by the profile of countries considering dollarization we make the following assumptions. First, the government faces a scarcity of...

This paper uses the onset of COVID-19 to examine how countries construct their policy packages in response to a severe negative shock. We use several new datasets to track the use of a large variety of policy tools: announced fiscal stimulus (both above- and below-the-line), monetary policy...

The recent financial crises pointed out the central role of public and private debt in modern economies. However, even if debt is a recurring topic in discussions about the current economic situation, economic modeling does not take into account debt as one of the crucial determinants of...

We leverage spatial variation in the severity of the Great Recession across the United States to examine its impact on mortality and to explore implications for the welfare consequences of recessions. We estimate that an increase in the unemployment rate of the magnitude of the Great Recession...

This paper analyzes the drivers of international waves in capital flows. We build on the literature on “sudden stops” and “bonanzas” to develop a new methodology for identifying episodes of extreme capital flow movements using quarterly data on gross inflows and gross outflows,...

This paper documents four trends in Asia: (1) the increase in the magnitude of gross capital inflows and outflows; (2) the larger magnitude of gross capital inflows relative to outflows in some countries; (3) the increase in the volatility of these capital flows; and (4) the steady increase in...

Are capital controls and macroprudential measures successful in achieving their objectives? Assessing their effectiveness is complicated by selection bias and endogeneity; countries which change their capital-flow management measures (CFMs) often share specific characteristics and are responding...